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61 " You can learn how to be an aristocrat by following a few rules in a very short book. There is nothing to it.” He gave the boy a small copy of a book called Manners for the Perfect Gentry. He taught Pierrot to hold his chin up higher and to cry out that he didn’t know why on earth he wasn’t in Italy. "
― Heather O'Neill , The Lonely Hearts Hotel
62 " They took turns looking deep, deep into the universe: Saturn like a knee that had been dipped in iodine, Neptune like a peach covered in mold, Jupiter like a half sucked jawbreaker, Mercury like a large shooter marble, galaxies like crushed candy, galaxies like the suds from a bubble bath blown off the palm of your hand. "
63 " The only people who had any actual grasp on morality were the under-eight demographic. They hadn’t created all sorts of loopholes in their understanding of it. Children are born with eyes as large as those of adults. Children keep theirs wide open. And children know, without a doubt, that there is a difference between right and wrong. "
64 " Nothing really matters on a Sunday,” his muffled voice said from under the jacket. “Everybody gets to have a day off from who they actually are. Don’t you think? Your crimes don’t count, your achievements don’t matter. You just have to curl up in your bed and take a lovely siesta. You are both nothing and everything in your dreams.” What "
65 " Humans were always more capable of evil than you could imagine. And they were also capable of more wonderment than you could ever fathom. People had come up with this city. And what was different between them and her? They had hands and eyes. They had imaginations. They went to bed at night, and they had funny adventures in their heads. Anything was possible. But the effects "
66 " What kind of bird do you think these feathers come from?' she asked.'I don't know. A swan?''You had better stop wearing those wings, then.A swan might fall in love with you. And as youprobably know, swans mate for life.''You are a funny one, Rose. "
67 " She had no business being a housewife, really. She probably had a mind built for the world's leading criminal investigator. She could be out in the world tracking down society's most heinous criminals or cracking enemy codes. Instead she was stuck in the house, focusing all her intellectual acumen and perspicuity on piecing together exactly what her husbad had been up to that evening. "
68 " When he was a baby, he didn’t do much of anything at all. He wouldn’t even sit up but just lay on his back, staring at the ceiling. "
69 " I find that I can't help being bad. I promise and promise and promise myself that I won't be a bad person. But then I just do something bad.''That's because we're girls. We're supposed to only have emotions. We aren't even allowed to have thoughts. And it's fine to feel sad and happy and mad and in love- but those are just moods. Emotions can't get anything done. An emotion is just a reaction. You don't only want to be having reactions in this lifetime. You need to be having actions too, thoughtful actions. "
70 " Because they travelled together, they developed intimacy. This was something other orphans didn’t have. Intimacy makes you feel unique. Intimacy makes you feel as though you have been singled out, that someone in the world believes you have special qualities that nobody else has. "
71 " Most of us hide away when we are sad, Rose thought. But performers were sad in public. She liked how honest they all were. They opened up their hearts They took out every emotion-no matter how small or pathetic or odd-and celebrated it. "
72 " What in the world do our clothes say about us when we put them on?” Rose said. “There’s no real dignity in any of these costumes. If I’m a maid, I do what the owner of the house tells me to do. If I’m a nurse, I do whatever the doctor tells me to do. What are we as women, other than barnacles that attach themselves to higher life forms in some pathetic attempt to clean up messes? Tidy up what men have left behind—make the world a lovelier, better place for men. I would like to play a part in which I don’t have a superior.” The director told Rose that she should save her philosophical speculations until after work because they were causing the male actors to lose their erections. "
73 " It was good to have an imagination if you were a girl and living in Montreal at the beginning of the twentieth century. Intelligence was what she needed. But she never listened to anyone. "
74 " Everything written by any woman was written by all women, because they all benefited from it. "
75 " The Mother Superior was of the opinion that happiness always led to tragedy. She had no idea why people valued the emotion and pursued it. It was nothing more than a temporary state of inebriation that led a person to make the worst decisions. There wasn't a person who had experienced life on this planet who wouldn't admit that sin and happiness were bedmates, were inextricably linked. Were there ever any two states of being that were so attracted to each other, were always seeking out each other's company? They were a match made not in heaven but in hell. "